


it's fucking cold

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2680559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis keeps looking up as they pass under streetlights, smiling at the fallen snow, and Nick keeps looking over at Louis, smiling at the flakes that catch in his eyelashes and make him blink five times more than usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's fucking cold

**Author's Note:**

> it snowed yesterday. i had to write something cheesy. and yeah, they're american.

The mattress shifting jostles Nick awake. It takes him a second to remember he fell asleep with someone beside him and another to remember who. He hears Louis’ soft footsteps padding down the halls, toward the stairs, and opens his eyes to check the time. 4:38 AM.

Even though he listens for it, the front door still hasn’t opened by the time the clock reads 5:00.

Curious, Nick slips out of bed and immediately curses cold floors as he puts on his glasses. He should get slippers, even though Louis would mock him endlessly, call him an old fart. He almost trips on Louis’ jeans, and his curiosity grows. What on earth is that boy doing?

Nick makes his way downstairs, following Louis’ whispered curses to the kitchen. Leaning against the doorway, Nick watches him search through the cabinets over the counter and whispers, “What are you doing?”

Louis startles spectacularly, dropping his phone, which he’d been using as a flashlight, as he spins to face Nick. “Don’t _do_ that.”

He’s got one hand pressed to his chest like he’s holding in his heart. Nick smiles.

“What were you looking for?” he asks, flicking on the light and stepping into the room. Louis makes a disgruntled sound, shielding his eyes.

“Nothing,” he says. He picks up his phone and seems surprised that Nick is still there when he straightens out. Rolling his eyes, he says, “Hot cocoa.”

“I don’t have any.”

“I can see that now, thank you.”

“Aren’t you all about tea?” Nick questions as Louis closes the cabinets.

“It’s snowing,” Louis replies, and Nick raises his eyebrows. Louis stares at him for a moment, light eyes probing, mouth pressed thin. Apparently Nick passes the examination. “Every year on the first snow, me and my mom drink hot cocoa and watch it fall, except this year…”

“You’re not home,” Nick finishes. Nodding once, Louis turns his phone in his hands. He’s not looking at Nick anymore. Nick watches him with a frown.

The thing about Louis, he rarely tells Nick anything that isn’t a thinly veiled insult or some ridiculously elaborate lie that has Nick warring between amusement and irritation. Almost everything Nick knows about him comes from Harry or his own observations. This random little fact feels huge.

Which is why, with only the slightest hesitation, Nick says, “Let’s go get some.”

Louis meets his eyes, unsure. “It’s not even light out.”

“There must be somewhere that’s open already.”

Nick waits as Louis’ expression shifts into something more like hesitant excitement.

“Really?” he says, watching Nick like he’s waiting for him to say he's joking, maybe to call him, his tradition, stupid. It hurts a little bit that Louis would think he’s that mean.

“Come on, put some pants on,” Nick says, gesturing to Louis’ lower half, clad only in boxers. The smile Nick receives, though small and a little tired, is brighter than any other he’s seen from Louis before.

“Okay,” he agrees, brushing past Nick to go upstairs. Because he’s Louis, he also pinches Nick on the hip, just to make him yelp in protest.

“That’s not funny,” Nick calls after him. Louis’ delighted laughter claims otherwise.

A minute later, Louis comes bounding back down in a pair of Nick’s flannel pajama pants.

“Now we match,” he declares, joining Nick by the front door. Nick rolls his eyes as he hands off the hoodie Louis had on when he came over.

“Fabulous,” he says, pulling on his own coat. He already put on shoes, so he waits for Louis to stuff his feet into his treasured black vans. “Can we go now?”

Nick is reaching for his keys, but Louis knocks his hand away.

“We can walk,” he insists and then opens the door, flourishing an arm so that Nick goes out first, which he only does because they could argue about it for hours and he doesn’t have the patience.

Side by side Nick and Louis walk down the sidewalk that connects Nick’s neighborhood to the main road. They keep their hands in their pockets—because it’s fucking cold; Nick doesn’t know how Louis isn’t an icicle already—but their elbows knock together and it’s…nice.

Louis keeps looking up as they pass under streetlights, smiling at the fallen snow, and Nick keeps looking over at Louis, smiling at the flakes that catch in his eyelashes and make him blink five times more than usual.

He’s beautiful. It’s something Nick has thought plenty of times before, but never with the warmth growing in his chest the more he watches Louis enamored by the weather. It feels like a privilege, to see him like this.

They stop in a convenience store a few blocks from Nick’s. The fluorescent lights hurt Nick’s eyes, but Louis seems unbothered, winding through the aisles with a determined look on his face.

“Ha!” he exclaims, lifting a box of Swiss Miss from a shelf in the middle of the store. His triumphant smile is infectious. Louis also finds and enormous bag of mini marshmallows that he insists are necessary. Nick doesn’t argue, just passes over money to the unfortunate soul manning the register.

On the way back, Nick sacrifices the feeling in one hand to carry their spoils, and Louis loops an arm through his. When Nick glances over, surprised, Louis is looking up at the sky.

Back in the house, Louis goes into the living room while Nick makes the cocoa. He hears something heavy being pushed across the floor, but the microwave beeps before he can go investigate. After he stirs in the powder, he grabs the marshmallows and the mugs and carries them to the living room.

Louis has moved the over-sized arm chair Nick rarely sits in to face the front window, where the curtains are drawn open. He waits for Nick to reach him, takes the mugs out of his hands and places them gingerly on the end table he also moved, and then shoves Nick into the chair.

“What—” Nick starts. Louis shushes him, dropping a handful of marshmallows into each mug. Then he situates himself sideways in Nick’s lap and gives him back his hot chocolate.

“Quiet time, Nicholas,” Louis says, eyes already fixed out the window. He blows into his own cocoa, legs drawn up against his chest, feet propped on the arm rest. Nick sighs. At least Louis is pretty light. And warm. There are worse ways he could spend a Saturday morning.

Half an hour later, Nick displaces Louis to go to the bathroom. As he’s washing his hands, he hears Louis’ ringtone and then Louis running for it, feet pounding against the floor.

Louis’ relocated to the kitchen table when Nick goes to collect their empty mugs. His voice drifts out, words incomprehensible until Nick joins him.

“Of course I'm awake,” Louis says, eyes following Nick around the room while he deposits the mugs in the sink and then sits at the table across from him. “Nick’s house. _Mom._ ”

Nick raises his eyebrows, questioning. Louis is turning pink; he shakes his head quickly, one hand finding his forehead and shielding his eyes.

“Oh my god, Mom, please,” Louis says. “He’s right here, that’s why.”

Humming, Nick rests his chin in an upturned hand and smiles at Louis’ discomfort. Louis pulls a face.

“I'll come over Tuesday. And I'll bring Harry.” He pauses, glances at Nick. “Love you, too. Bye. _Bye_ , Mom.”

Hanging up, Louis sets his phone on the table, quickly followed by his head.

“I swear my mother loves Harry more than me,” he says, voice muffled.

“Harry just has that effect on mothers,” Nick says. Louis snorts, turning his head so he can cast a sidelong glance at Nick. “So why were you blushing?”

“I was not blushing!” Louis protests, but his cheeks color again as he says it.

“Uh huh.”

“I _wasn’t._ ”

“Whatever you want to believe,” Nick says, grinning. Louis sits up and flicks him in the shoulder. He has to lift a little off the chair to reach; it’s endearing.

“Make me breakfast, idiot.”

“What am I, your servant?” Nick asks.

“Obviously,” Louis says. “I want French toast. And eggs.”

“I can give you regular toast and eggs.”

Letting out a long sigh, Louis agrees to settle. He picks up his phone again as Nick gets up to make breakfast. He’s hungry, too, so it’s not like he’s doing it _just_ for Louis.

“My mom knows we fuck,” Louis says, almost making Nick drop the egg carton. “She thinks I want you to be my boyfriend.”

Nick frowns, but his back is to Louis. He cracks a few eggs into a pan and turns on the burner.

“Do you?” he asks. Louis makes a weird noise, something between a scoff and just choking.

“Are you kidding?” he manages. That wasn’t an answer. Nick says as much, and Louis makes the weird noise again. “You would be a horrible boyfriend.”

“Am I not making you breakfast right now?” Nick argues. He’s not sure why he’s arguing; every time he’s had a boyfriend in the past, the relationship crashed and burning pretty soon after the label was applied. Mostly because he got weird. Commitment freaks him out; he hardly makes plans a week ahead.

“If anything,” Nick continues, “ _you_ would be a horrible boyfriend.”

Louis gasps. “I am a great boyfriend! Just ask Harry.”

Nick turns to look at him. “You dated Harry?”

Louis deflates. “Well, no.” He puffs up again a second later. “But I pretend to be his boyfriend sometimes if he doesn’t want someone to hit on him, and I am excellent at it.”

“I'm sure you are, Lou,” Nick concedes.

“Thank you.”

They fall into silence, only disturbed by Nick pushing the eggs around the pan. Louis gets up and puts bread in the toaster, then lingers and stares at Nick until Nick looks over.

“What?”

Louis shrugs, feigning innocence.

“Then quit looking at me, it’s creepy.”

“Just.” Louis cuts himself off, frustrated. “Would you, like, want to be my boyfriend?”

It’s Nick’s turn to stare. “Are you asking me to be your boyfriend?”

“It depends on your answer,” Louis says, crossing his arms over his chest. Nick almost laughs.

“I don’t know,” he replies. “I feel like we’d be pretty horrible as a couple.”

“So? We’ve been together all morning and we haven’t killed each other.”

“It’s only six thirty, Louis.”

“Yeah, that’s, like, two hours!”

Nick takes the eggs off the heat at the same time the bread pops out of the toaster. He won’t say he hasn’t thought about the boyfriend thing. Sometimes Louis comes over with food and a movie Nick just _has to see_ , or they’ll meet somewhere and hang out for a while before going back to Nick’s house, or Louis and Harry’s apartment if Harry is out. It’s kind of like they’re dating, but they also fight constantly, about stupid things.

If Louis is in a mood, he’ll argue everything Nick says, even if it’s something Louis said first. And Nick tends to ignore people just because he feels like it. They would be a disaster.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay what?” Louis asks absently, thoroughly involved in buttering his toast.

“I'd be your boyfriend, if you were asking.”

“Oh,” Louis says. “Well, I was going to say no if you said yes.”

His smile betrays him. He waits until Nick has split the eggs on two plates to tug him down for a kiss.

“I would say we should have celebratory sex, but I'm starving,” he says. “Also that’s lame.”

Nick laughs. “There’s always later. We are snowed in, after all.”

“Very true,” Louis muses. “Now get me some tea.”


End file.
